Blog

December 27

Early in 2017 I will be teaching a range of different writing and self-development courses at RMIT and The School of Life. Here are the details and links if you’re interested in exploring any of these sessions – no previous experience required – all welcome.

A day-long workshop that explains exactly what shyness/social anxiety is (including the benefits of being born shy) and how we can manage the sometimes distressing symptoms of this common temperament trait.

December 11

I can’t watch commercial television news these days. This is not because of the quality of the news coverage. I have a high tolerance for predictable reductive narratives in all sorts of things, TV news stories included. We all grow up on this stuff. We learn the scripts without even noticing them. We know who the good guys and the bad guys are going to be even as the news host is reading out the two sentence introduction to the story.

No, for me the problem is the puppies.

They’re stuck in drainpipes or floating down swollen rivers or left in a ditch the week after Xmas. Sometimes the puppies are kittens, or ducklings, or even guinea pigs. They’re always in trouble and it always requires a kindly human to rescue them from their plight. And they’re always at the end of the news bulletin.

The journalist in me is filled with a deep nausea about the predictability of their appearance after the weather forecast and before the titles. The creative writer in me is horrified by the cheap sentimentality of this narrative device. But as soon as the slow-motion footage begins – the puppy is re-united with its worried owner, the ducklings are reunited with the frantic mother duck – I am in tears.

No matter how much I steel myself for this approaching predictable curtain closer, the rational, cynical brain is overwhelmed by something much more powerful.

This is the only way I can understand my tears – and my recent decision to get myself a puppy for Xmas.

The rational brain fought hard. Lists were written of the pros and cons. The list of cons was much longer. The loss of freedom, the loss of sleep, the financial cost, the pee on the carpet, the ruined garden, the grooming and feeding and walking and worrying. The training that will be required. The barking that could annoy the neighbours. It was a long, long list.

The list of reasons to get myself a puppy was much, much shorter. In fact it wasn’t a list at all, strictly speaking. But if I told you which single four letter word was on it, I would be guilty of using the same pathetic and predictable narrative device that I can’t tolerate on the nightly news. So I’ll leave you to figure that out for yourselves.

October 23

In the main street of a small town in northwest NSW there’s a street sign covered in hieroglyphics. The strange wedge-shaped strokes look like some ancient Sumerian script. ‘Stock Brands of the Liverpool Plains’, the title says. Next to the hieroglyphics is a list of names – ‘Known Early Squatters’ – and all but one are men.

As I wander the deserted town I notice all the names on all the buildings – lawyers offices, proprietary hotels, automotive repair shops – are men’s names. The women are silent and invisible in the public records of this town. Behind the scenes, though, the women have been making themselves heard.

I am here to speak at the fiftieth birthday party of the oldest regional book club in Australia.* Five decades ago an American woman blew into town, university-educated and newly-married to a local grazier. She was a big reader and quickly found some bookish friends in the local community. This American had planned to be a diplomat, until love intervened. She knew how to run a meeting.

A book club was formed with a strict but sensible list of rules. Membership would be limited to thirty women. Everyone would take a turn at hosting a meeting and reviewing the chosen books. In a booklet about the club’s history one inaugural member described herself living in ‘an isolated new corner on a property (with) no hours to spare.’ Then came a phone call from the brisk American (“you will always find time, if you really want to do something”) and a chance to pursue her ‘greatest love – reading and sharing of books and minds’. The spare hours were duly found.

At the first meeting Patrick White and George Johnston were up for discussion. Over the ensuing years the quieter club members were given gentle encouragement to overcome their fear of public speaking. When their turn came around, they discovered they could give impassioned presentations about literature. Five decades on, the club has discussed over seven hundred books.

The fiftieth anniversary party is held at the local golf club. Silver-haired women clasp my hands and tell me the group has given them nourishment, grace and insight. One confides, ‘The printed word has been the most stimulating part of my life’.

I have been invited to talk to them about how social anxiety can reduce people to silence. But there’s nothing I can tell these women that they don’t instinctively know. In this book club they have assuaged each other’s loneliness, stimulated each other’s minds, and eased each other’s fears. They have found their voices. I hope they’re still going in another fifty years time.

* The club members requested anonymity for their group. They have no interest in publicity.

October 14

Last weekend i paid my second visit to the Islamic Museum in Thornbury. The first had been organised by my friend and fellow writer Fiona Scott-Norman. In a gesture of friendship she responded to a letter to a newspaper in which the museum’s communication’s director, Sherene Hassan, issued an open invitation to come and have a coffee at the museum. Via Facebook, Fiona gathered about sixty friends to join her for two separate visits – ‘Coffee With Sherene’ – and a lovely time was had by all.

We were given a tour of the museum by some of the volunteers and learnt a lot about the faith, history, culture and complexity of Islam. We shared stories and made new friends. I met a woman who has two aunts stuck in the Syrian town of Aleppo. Now every time i see a news story about the horror of war in that town i worry specifically about these two women i haven’t met but feel distantly connected to.

I was so inspired by our first visit that i gathered a group of about 20 friends and family members and went back for another coffee and tour with the incredibly generous Sherene. I would encourage everyone to consider joining the Facebook groups Friends of Sherene and going down to Thornbury one day to see this architectural marvel and its fascinating exhibits – and say hello to Sherene. Small gestures of friendship and respect like this can make a dent in the wall of racism that is building in our country. I truly believe this.

Sherene Hassan

Our group of visitors at the Islamic Museum

Some of the exhibits at the Islamic Museum

August 12

I’m back to work now after my wonderful winter travels and I thought some of you might be interested in the various creative and professional writing courses i’m running in Melbourne over the next few months.

July 28

I have been wanting to go to Iceland for a few years now. Something about the wild landscape, the small population size, the intriguing political history and the music scene, all combined to push it to the top of my travel list. So I persuaded my friend Kate to join me in a two week jaunt around the south of the island. We both spent the trip agape at the natural beauty. (We also saw Bjork get out of her car in the main street. But that’s another story.) I think it’s worth two separate postings – here’s the first. (More comprehensive captions coming soon)

Reykjavik.

I arrived in town the night the Icelandic soccer team came home to an anti-hero’s welcome, after the European Cup.

Some stunning architecture in Reykjavik.

This is where the first Icelandic parliament met.

Can’t believe our luck.

Water water everywhere.

Bubble bubble boil and bubble. Geysers everywhere.

An Icelandic farmer’s daughter threatened to throw herself off this waterfall if it was dammed for hydro-electric power. You go girl!

Another stunning waterfall.

Long way up. But look at that view.

July 27

After two weeks in Wales I was meant to go to Brittany. But the comrades in air traffic control in France went on strike so instead I headed to Rome for four days. Warm weather, history piled up under my feet, best coffee in weeks, and the bells tolling all day long. Didn’t want to leave. Next chapter – Iceland!

June 24

I’ve spent the past two weeks travelling around Wales with my mother Margot (née Jones) and sister Yoni (short for Merrioneth). We wanted to explore our family’s Welsh heritage. And hang out together. What luxury. Here’s some of what we’ve seen.

The walls of Bute Park, beside Cardiff Castle, are decorated with stone animals. Hard not to pat them.

We have visited the seaside town of Penarth a few times. Lovely pier, and part of the Wales Coastal Walk, which is now chiselled onto my bucket list.

Pier Head is the building from which all the coal exports were coordinated – traffic control for shipping. Extraordinary history at Cardiff Bay, especially for someone descended from a Welsh coal-miner as I was.

I found this public artwork in Cardiff Bay very moving.

This was one of the many glorious objects on display at Tredegar House, preserved in three eras from the 17th to the early 20th centuries.

Mallards on the lake at Tredegar House.

We visited the town of Blaenevon, where our ancestor Theophilus Jones was a coal miner and haulier in the mid 1800’s. We have a diary he wrote on the ship coming to Australia in 1854. A man with a keen eye for detail but not much of a funster.

Blaenevon is a World Heritage listed town because of its mining history. This signage also proves that the ‘si’ in Sian is pronounced shhhh.

Back in Cardiff we explored lots of gorgeous covered laneways. In the Castle Arcade you can find Jones The Barber, Cardiff Violins and Friends of the Earth. And an excellent cafe called Barker.